


Between Dog and Wolf

by theleaveswant



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Blackwater AU, Camping, Canon - TV, Discussion of Hypothetical Rape, Episode: s02e09 Blackwater, Gen, Horseback Riding, Menstruation, No Underage Sex, Running Away, Underage Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 11:56:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theleaveswant/pseuds/theleaveswant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind,” he says, twisting around in the saddle to address her. “I’m not taking you back.”</p><p>She shakes her head and rubs at her cheeks. “I’ve never been happier to leave a place in my life.”</p><p>He grunts and knees the big horse faster.</p><p> </p><p>Started for Porn Battle XV (The Ides of Porn), although there's really nothing porny in this one. Prompts "after", "blood", "clean", "courtesy", "flight", "humiliation", "light", "protection", "runaway", "Stranger".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between Dog and Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> The start of a Blackwater AU (because everybody who likes these two characters interacting has to write one of those, right?). Fans of the books, forgive me, but I've only just started reading them and am nowhere near this point yet, so this is based pretty much entirely on TV canon and may be entirely incompatible with the book version. 
> 
> Sansa is, of course, only 14ish here, but there's no sex in this part and there might or might not be in later parts if I continue it (I have a few ideas of where to go, and they are mostly in the "just a liiiittle bit Natural Born Killers" direction).
> 
> The title comes from a French expression for dusk, "entre chien et loup", describing the liminal space between day and night where the light is too faint to distinguish between the tame and familiar and the wild and unknown.

Sansa doesn’t see the city they ride through that night, her face pressed tight to the stinking, bloody leather of his brigandine as her fingers clutch white-knuckled at his sides beneath the plain grey cloak stretched tight around them both, concealing her from sight. She can still smell the smoke, though, and she can still hear the bells. She imagines she can hear screaming, as well, though they’re a long way from the battle on the city walls.

She’s packed light, which she knew to do before he cautioned her: one change of clothes, her hairbrush, a knotted shawl full of jewelry she can sell or trade for food and aid, and the thick fur blanket she’d brought with her from Winterfell. He’d hacked up her bed curtains with his sword before they left, with the aim of confusing any pursuers, while she took perverse glee in toppling tables and candle stands and strewing her fancy Southern dresses about the floor. The bloody puddles his soiled armour had left on the bench while he waited for her would probably help to sell the story of her violent abduction.

Sansa holds herself flat against his back even after they’ve cleared the city—a small miracle, she thinks, but the few Goldcloaks who remain by the landside gates are more concerned with catching people trying to enter the city than stopping those trying to leave, and the ones they happened to pass were either too preoccupied to recognize the Hound or too intimidated to question his purpose. It’s warm in the darkness under the cloak, and the thick smells of horse and leather are familiar, almost comforting. She feels small, tucked up against him, and safe in a way she knows is not rational. Like she’s a little girl again, held tight in her father’s arms.

Her father . . .

For a moment it feels as if she cannot breathe, and then when she can it comes in great shuddering sobs that burn in her throat while tears burn in her eyes.

“Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind,” he says, twisting around in the saddle to address her. “I’m not taking you back.”

She shakes her head and rubs at her cheeks. “I’ve never been happier to leave a place in my life.”

He grunts and knees the big horse faster.

The night is well entrenched by the time they stop, and they’re far enough from the burning Blackwater and deep enough into the woods beyond the Sprawl that she can hardly see. In this darkness the uneven terrain is too dangerous to traverse on horseback, or even on foot, and they’re forced to choose a spot between the trees to rest until morning.

“Sleep,” he tells her after they’ve both relieved themselves, the darkness serving for privacy in the absence of a privy, and eaten a quick supper of dried meat and hard bread. Sansa can hear the flapping of the bedroll as he shakes it out over a patch of flattish ground. “I’ll keep first watch.”

She shakes her head, though of course he cannot see her. “I'm not sure I can.” Her heart is pounding too hard, and her mind a-buzz.

There’s a pause, quiet but for the snuffling of the horse and the creak of his armour, before he sighs. “Right, then. I’ll sleep. You can watch. Kick me in four hours or if you hear anything big approaching.”

“How will I know when four hours have passed?”

He pauses in the process of settling down on the bedroll. She gets the impression he’s pointing, but when all she can see are swimming shadows it’s hard to tell if something’s really moving. “You see the moon?”

“Yes?”

“See that tree, there, sticking out taller than the others?”

“Yes.” She thinks she can, anyway, a twisted broken arm standing out darker against the blue-black sky.

“When the whole of the moon’s below the top branch of that tree, wake me.”

She nods. “All right.” She reaches out into the darkness until her fingers find rough bark and follows it down to the ground, feeling for a space between the roots where she can sit with her back to the trunk, and wipes the dirt from her hands on her skirt.

He gets comfortable with a lot of grumbling and rustling, then falls silent. Eventually he snores, but it seems to take a long time.

He wakes up cursing, almost smacks himself in the face in his haste to block out the sunlight with a hand. He rolls over enough to crack an eye at her, still huddled at the base of the tree with her knees drawn up to her chest. “I told you to wake me before dawn,” he growls.

“It got cloudy,” she says.

He tries to turn his glare up to the sky then hisses and rubs at his forehead. There’s a thin morning haze in the air, but nothing dense enough to call clouds. He pushes up to sitting and reaches for the saddlebag, fishes out a skin and drinks. Sticky-looking pink-red wine trickles down his chin through his beard. 

She’s a bit peeved that he ordered her to pack light when his own baggage was already loaded with wine, but she keeps that irritation to herself.

“Did you sleep at all?” he asks her. She shakes her head and yawns. He sighs and stoppers the skin, starts packing up his bedroll. “You’ll have to sleep on the move, then. We’ve got too much ground to cover.”

The half-night spent on hard ground has left them both stiff but he loses little time to stretching before untying his horse and preparing to ride on. He offers her the wineskin before he puts it back in the bag and she hesitates to take it. “Is there water?” she asks, and he rolls his eyes but pulls another skin from the bag and tosses it at her.

He lifts her up onto the horse, up on the withers in front of the saddle, and climbs up behind her. “So you don’t fall off,” he says as he nudges the destrier forward, picking his way carefully through the forest.

She sinks into a doze with her head on his shoulder, rocked to sleep by the steady movement of the horse, and dreams of swaying bridges spanning towers high above the city, and people like ants on the ground below.

“Wake up now, little bird.” He’s shaking her by the arm, pinching her, but soft enough that it doesn’t really hurt. “There’s a creek just ahead.”

She can hear it, a cheerful burbling underneath the steady murmur of the leaves over their heads—browning leaves, even this far south, and already starting to fall. He stops the horse above a rocky cut in the creek’s bank and helps her down before leading the beast to the water’s edge.

One steep step to a thin lip of damp pebbles; she bends to remove her slippers and hose and gather up her skirts in her arms, then climbs down and wades into the shallow water. She gasps when her feet touch the surface: it’s the coldest thing she’s felt for months. Sansa can almost believe that it’s meltwater from the North, travelled as far south as she has or farther, all the way from the Wall, and that it will lead her home to Winterfell if she just follows it upstream.

Keeping her skirts out of the calf-deep creek while she stoops to gather water to wash her face and neck is a challenge but she mostly manages it. While bending over she notices the smear of blood on her thigh that means her smallclothes have soaked through, and, for lack of a better option, she has to wash the cloth pad Shae gave her in the stream and put it back.

“Are you still . . .” She startles at the rumble of his voice.

He’s behind her, upstream, refilling the waterskins. Her back is to him; she can’t imagine how he’d know, until she sees the stream of red washing out of the pad and away down the creek.

“Yes,” she says, her face hot with embarrassment, though of course he’d already seen the evidence in her chamber.

“How much longer?”

She frowns. “I don’t know how to know that.” She rings the pad as dry as she can before she replaces it but it’s still cold from the stream and the sensation is bizarre. A frightful thought occurs to her and she turns to look sideways at him, her eyes wide. “Can they track us by the blood?”

He tips his head to the side and wades out of the creek. With his damp hair pushed back from his face it’s easy to see just how much of his scalp was burned away. “If they mean to track us they’ve enough ways to do that. I was thinking more of forest beasts that might be drawn to the smell. Bears and shadowcats. Wolves, as we head north. Feral dogs.”

She makes a sour face as she follows him back to the bank. “The queen said I’d be glad of it, if Stannis took the city and his soldiers came to rape me.” As refreshingly bracing as the chill in Sansa’s feet is, it feels good to get them back into warm hose and silk slippers.

“You might have been, in time, not to carry some stranger’s bastard.” He’s talking over his shoulder as he re-secures the saddlebags, and he pauses before continuing. “The first man to reach you might have took it for a blessing, to find the passage already greased.”

“Gods!” She’s not sure if she’s more aghast at his crudeness and gall, to say things like that to a girl of her standing, or at the horrible picture his words painted.

He turns to look down at her, still sitting on the ground above the creek. “Stannis is no fool. He’d not willingly allow you come to harm, not while he’s a need to make peace with your brother. That cunt Lannister, though—if Stannis took the city she’d have you killed just to spite him.”

Sansa nods slowly and gets to her feet, moving stiffly.

“Does it cause you any pain?” His voice is surprisingly tender.

She shakes her head; she has plenty of other aches, from the ride and from their run-in with the mob, but none of the cramping agony she’s been warned can accompany the bleeding.

“Good,” he says curtly. “We don’t need anything else slowing us down. That dress of yours is bad enough already.”

Sansa looks down at her gown; it’s a mess and showing the signs of its recent rough treatment, but it’s a fine piece of handiwork. “What’s wrong with my dress?”

“It’s too heavy and too long, and it’ll trip you up if you have to run.”

“Are you suggesting that I take it off?” She can feel her cheeks colour.

He stares at her like she’s simple. “I’m suggesting that you cut it shorter.” He draws the knife from his belt and takes a step toward her, and she retreats in such haste that she nearly proves him right about the tripping. He sighs and turns the knife around, holding the handle in her direction. She reaches out cautiously to take it.

It’s hard to get a good grip on the slippery fabric and the seams are a challenge; she winds up with something jagged-edged and lower on the right than the left, the whole thing ending just below her knees, but he seems to approve. “Better to cut the sleeves, as well, and do away with your stays, but it’s a start.”

Sansa purses her lips. “I’ll trim the sleeves now, but anything else will have to wait until I’ve somewhere private to dress.” And to figure out how to do it on my own, she thinks, without a septa or handmaiden to help me.

She wonders what Arya would say if she could see her prim and proper sister wading in streams and hacking up her pretty gowns. She wonders if Arya’s still alive, and why she hasn’t heard any news.

“Do you have any idea what’s happened to my sister?”

He shrugs and climbs back into the saddle, pulling her up pillion behind him as he had the night before. “The queen charged Littlefinger with finding her. The Imp sent Littlefinger to needle your mother to release the Kingslayer. That’s the last I heard of any of them.” He looks at her over his right shoulder, his scarred eye just visible over the top of his heavy armour. “If you think you’re going to fall asleep again, tell me. I’d prefer to keep your pretty neck unbroken.”


End file.
